Fire's Lady Page 11

  "No."

  "If it is Stephen you're worried about, he'll find himself another accomplice."

  "I'm not an accomplice, Mr. McKenna. I'm an assistant."

  "I know how it is with you two. Stephen can be very persuasive."

  "I shall tell you just once more: I have known Stephen Lowell but one hour longer than I have known you. There is no dark alliance between us."

  "I'd like to believe you."

  She placed her hands on his chest and pushed herself away from him. "I do not care whether or not you do. You have a suspicious and evil mind, Mr. McKenna, and I would rather risk a bullet than stay here with you a moment longer."

  Struggling to her feet, she stumbled across the sand toward the wooden stairs to the house. In an instant he covered the distance between them.

  "Pack your bags," he said, towering over her. "I'll take you to the depot in Bridgehampton. You could be back in New York City by this time tomorrow night."

  "Go to hell, Mr. McKenna," she said, panic snaking its way through her belly. Could he force her to leave? If he did, where on earth would she go?

  "Why stay where you're not wanted?" he persisted, thwarting her attempt to slip past him.

  "I am wanted here. Andrew Lowell wants me."

  "Andrew Lowell doesn't know what he wants. All he can think about is pain."

  "The works in the attic... there's so much that needs to be done."

  "We'll get someone else."

  "No!" She wanted to throw herself at his feet and beg but she still had a shred of pride left. "Please! This is my position. Don't take it away from me."

  His blue-green eyes narrowed as he looked down at her. "If it's money, I'll see to it that you're compensated handsomely."

  Cold sweat trickled down her back and she shivered.

  "Name your price," he prodded her. "I'll see to it you get it."

  "You're a bastard, Mr. McKenna." Her entire body started to tremble. He was a powerful man, in both strength and purpose, and she feared she was losing the fight.

  "Go back where you came from. This isn't the place for you."

  "You don't understand." That couldn't be her voice, not that cracking sad sound.

  "Marry a rich man."

  "McKenna, I am pleading with you to allow me to return to the main house."

  "This isn't where you belong, Miss Glenn. Go home."

  "I can't."

  "You can," he said, suddenly triumphant. "I can have the coach ready within the hour. A ship leaves for Europe every day of the week."

  "It's impossible."

  "Nothing is impossible. Andrew has connections."

  She thought about Gabrielle and the look on her face when she told Alexandra she was no longer welcome in her cottage. She thought about the townspeople who had moved away from her after the Charbonnes died and about Marisa, her blood mother, who had stripped her of all that was familiar and dear and shipped her across the ocean as if she were a piece of furniture bound for another house.

  "I can't," she whispered brokenly. "I can't go home."

  Sensing victory he stepped closer to her. "Of course you can. I just told you what I can do for you." She shook her head, eyes blinded with hot salty tears. "Tell me what it is," he urged, his voice so seductively sweet. "I can take care of it, Alexandra. Tell me."

  "I have no home, McKenna," she snapped. "I have no one."

  "You must have someone—cousins, aunts, friends. Somewhere you can go."

  Her voice grew shrill and loud. "Why can you not believe me when I tell you this?" Her words came from the darkest part of her soul, the one place she'd dared not look since Marisa sent her away. "Don't you understand, McKenna? I have nowhere to go."

  And then, to her horror, she began to cry.

  Chapter Eight

  Three weeks of despair and fear and loneliness erupted and Alexandra could do nothing save stand there with her face buried in her hands and weep for everything she'd lost—and everything that could never be.

  He probably thought her a spineless fool, falling apart with so little provocation, shaking with huge gulping sobs that were neither pretty nor polite. She felt the heat as he stepped closer and she knew she should move away, should do anything but stand there and let him see her like this, but she was helpless to move. Huge fingers covered hers and gently pried her hands away from her face, until she found herself staring into those beautiful blue-green eyes of his.

  "Cry," he said, his voice low and oddly tender. "Cry it all out, Alexandra."

  He rested his hand on the top of her hair and that simple action tore down the last of her boundaries and she allowed herself the exquisite luxury of being held in his strong arms while she cried her heart out.

  It was gone, all of it. Gabrielle and the baby and the golden meadows of Provence and that feeling of joy that came over her each time she took her sketchbook out into the field and captured the beauty of the land.

  "I understand," he whispered. "I know how it feels."

  Strangely, she believed he did. How wonderful it felt to rest her head against his chest and feel the beating of his heart, strong and sure against her cheek. Was that how it was with a man then? Protection and comfort and words whispered in the darkness?

  He stroked her hair while she cried and listened quietly as she railed against Marisa and the unfairness of life and with each tear shed there came acceptance.

  "I never wanted anything more than my sketching and the countryside," she managed, accepting a square of white cambric from him to blot her eyes. "I never asked to come here."

  "I'm sorry."

  She looked up at him, expecting to see that angry cynicism she'd come to know, but it wasn't there. Was it a trick of the moonlight or had they reached an understanding? Feeling awkward, she folded the handkerchief and slipped it into her pocket. "I'll see that it is laundered for you."

  "Come," he said gruffly, pushing a lock of hair off her cheek. "I'll take you back to the house. The poacher may still be around."

  "I'm fine." She straightened the shawl draped across her shoulders. "Please tend to your own business."

  "My business is to see you safely inside."

  She glanced toward the campfire gleaming red and orange down the beach. "I am too restless to retire for the evening. I thought I might—"

  He grabbed her shoulders and turned her around to face him. "Isn't one attempt on your life diversion enough for an evening, woman? You were lucky this time—you may not be the next."

  "I'm not afraid."

  "Maybe you should be."

  "Do not threaten me."

  "I save your pretty neck from taking target practice and you accuse me of threatening you?" He pulled her up against his body and held her tight. "The candlestick was a threat, Miss Glenn. Saying you would push me down the stairs was a threat. Plunging a knife in my chest was a threat."

  "You frightened me," she said, praying she could maintain her composure in the face of such rage. "I took it upon myself to protect my person."

  His hands spanned her back, burning through the shawl and the satin dress until her skin sizzled from his touch.

  "And now?" he asked, dipping his head toward her. "Are you frightened now?"

  "Yes," she said as he moved his mouth near. "Yes."

  He was going to kiss her—she knew it in every fiber of her body. Her knees trembled helplessly and her hands grasped his waist for support. Dear God, what on earth was happening to her? He could be her enemy as easily as he could be her friend. How did she know he hadn't taken the initial shot at her?

  If she had any sense whatsoever she would turn away from him or struggle or scream if she must, anything to prevent the kiss that she knew would be her undoing. Instead she stood there, paralyzed, and waited.

  But to her surprise, he stopped just a breath away from her lips and said, "Go back to the house."

  She blinked as if awakening from a dream. "What?"

  "Go back to the house."

  "
But I don't—"

  He turned her toward the wooden stairs and gave her a push. "Now!"

  Lifting her skirts over her ankles, she flew up the creaking wooden stairs then hurried across the lawn to the main house and she didn't look back.

  #

  Matthew watched until he saw her disappear safely into the house and then he swore.

  What kind of man was he to send a beautiful woman away without so much as sampling the sweetness of her lips? She had been his for the taking. Only a fool could have misinterpreted the pliant way she acquiesced to his embrace, the look of soft surrender on her lovely face, the low rush of anticipation in her voice.

  Right then, right there, he could have tumbled back to the ground and pressed her into the sand with the weight of his body and found the release he needed so desperately—but, no. Honor and compassion and a thousand other worthless emotions he'd believed himself long rid of decided to resurface, making it impossible for him to do anything but what he'd done.

  When he'd covered her body with his to shield her from the bullets whizzing overhead, he'd been unbearably aware of her as a woman. The feel of her soft breasts pressed against his chest, the curve of her hips and thighs between his, the way she smelled of the rain combined to bring him quickly to the breaking point.

  That had all changed the moment he saw her tears. How defenseless she'd looked without her veneer of worldliness. How vulnerable she had seemed with her proud neck bent and her beautiful face hidden in her hands. How incredibly sweet she had felt in his arms as her tears wet the front of his shirt and tore into his heart.

  She'd said things to him that he knew were important, things that would demand his attention later on, but none of it mattered right now. All he could think of was that for a moment, with her in his arms, he had felt alive.

  #

  "Good mornin', miss," Janine piped up as Alexandra came downstairs the next morning. "You're up early."

  "There's much to be done today," she said as the maid polished the last curve of the banister. "I thought I would get an early start." She wanted to see Matthew first thing and hopefully put to rest some of the jumbled thoughts that had kept her awake all night. Perhaps the same things that seemed so upsetting in the darkness would seem trifling in the light.

  "It would seem today's the day for early starts," Janine said, following Alexandra into the dining room. "Mister Matthew gobbled breakfast and left more than an hour ago."

  Disappointment captured her breath for a second, then: "And Stephen?"

  "Oh, we wouldn't be expectin' Mister Lowell before evening," she said, eyes dancing with mischief. "He's quite a busy man—or so I hear."

  Alexandra refused to speculate on Stephen's illicit rendezvous; her thoughts were too filled with Matthew McKenna and their encounter of the night before. She sat down at her place and helped herself to a steaming cup of tea while Janine bustled into the kitchen for her breakfast.

  "Janine," she said as the young maid returned with a tray piled high with coddled eggs and sausage and huge flaky corn muffins dripping with butter, "may I ask you a question?"

  Janine looked quite pleased with the idea. "I been here most of my life. If I don't have the answer I know someone who does."

  "Why do McKenna and Stephen hate one another so much?"

  Janine thought for a moment then shrugged. "I never thought much about it, miss. Mister Lowell has been here less than a year and hatin' him seems natural to me. Even his Uncle Andrew ain't partial to him."

  "Then I don't understand what he is doing here."

  "Blood," said Janine succinctly. "He came 'round one day to visit with his uncle and next thing I know we're setting a place for him each morning for breakfast."

  "And Mr. McKenna," she ventured, praying her face did not betray her keen interest in the maid's answer. "What is his connection?"

  Janine considered her question for a few moments, opening her mouth to speak then closing it quickly. "I don't exactly know," the red-haired maid answered finally, her eyes not quite meeting Alexandra's. "All I can say is he and Mr. Andrew are like a son and his father." She glanced quickly over her shoulder then leaned down toward Alexandra. "Cook told me that his mother worked belowstairs for Mr. Andrew's family back in the city and that Mr. Andrew took her boy under his wing."

  "So McKenna works for him then?" she prompted.

  Janine shrugged. "Yes, but he isn't one of us."

  The maid hurried back into the kitchen as pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. So she and McKenna were more alike than he had first allowed: neither servant nor family, they both occupied an uncertain position in the hierarchy of Sea View although his position certainly ranked higher.

  How odd it was to imagine Matthew McKenna as a little boy taken under a man's wing. He seemed as if he had sprung from the earth, with both his strengths and his angers already part of who and what he was. She sipped her tea then shook her head. Impossible to imagine such a powerful man living belowstairs, the son of a woman who made her living on her knees scrubbing floors.

  Her teacup clattered back into the saucer as the full meaning of the copper bath tub came clear for her.

  While she was on her knees scrubbing the wooden floor of the attic, she'd heard a sound near the stairs. Brushing her hair away from her eyes, she'd looked up to see nothing at all yet the sensation of being watched persisted.

  Now she knew he'd been there. McKenna had watched her work and somehow her actions had triggered in him an answering memory. The copper tub had been a gesture of respect to those memories; she had only happened to be the recipient.

  Those long and languid daydreams she had entertained while soaking in the fragrant water had been the product of her own loneliness, her own needs. They hadn't come close to the real reason behind Matthew McKenna's actions.

  The way he'd pushed her from him and ordered her back to the house last night returned in vivid detail making her face flood with color as she attacked her eggs with a fork.

  All night long she had wondered why he hadn't kissed her there in the moonlight.

  Now the answer was crystal clear.

  Why should he? She was nothing to him, just another worker in the Lowell household, and one he associated with his nemesis Stephen in the bargain.

  And he had Dayla. Beautiful exotic Dayla with her soft voice and even softer hands to keep him company in the heart of the night.

  What use had he for a backward and innocent country girl whose only hope for the future was her ability to paint and the fact that she didn't fear hard work.

  Forget him, she ordered herself. Put him from her mind here and now. No good could come of nursing daydreams about Matthew McKenna. No good at all.

  And the sooner she could convince herself of that the better off she would be.

  #

  Lake Geneva, Switzerland

  Below the window of Marisa's suite, Lake Geneva glittered in the late afternoon sunshine, the Alps reflected in its turquoise depths.

  The last time she visited she had been with Jean-Paul—or was it Henri who had shared her bed. Ah well. No matter. Her fortieth birthday loomed on the horizon and passion was relegated to memory.

  How pathetically unfair.

  If she felt well enough, she would weep for what had become of her life but she had barely the energy to keep her eyes open although it was but early afternoon.

  "Madame Glenn." Her doctor, debonair in a dark brown frock coat and striped trousers, tapped on the door then entered the room. "Your beauty surpasses even our glorious scenery."

  "You flatter me, Doctor." You lie, as well.

  He availed himself of the chair opposite her chaise longue. "You are well today?" She laughed but the sound was devoid of mirth. "I would rather you tell me."

  His festive mood vanished and a sense of dread draped across her like a shroud. So there it was: once again the Almighty had taken her life into His Hands and nothing she or the doctor could do would change the direction in which
He was propelling her.

  "We have done all we can, Madame. I am sorry." The doctor began to speak rapidly in French and, despite her years in Paris, she found herself losing much of what he said.

  "I assume you would advise I get my affairs in order, would you not?"

  "That is wise for any of us, Madame Glenn."

  "Yes," she persisted, "but wiser for some of us than for others."

  He looked up, his brown eyes solemn. "You are correct, Madame. I would recommend you speak with your family. There is, I believe, a daughter...?"

  "She is in America," Marisa said. "I will write to her this afternoon."

  There was, of course, nothing more to be said and the doctor soon excused himself.

  Marisa leaned back against the pillows and closed her eyes. The last four nights she had dreamed of her daughter, dark threatening dreams in which the girl held a knife to Marisa's throat while Andrew Lowell, still handsome and powerful, laughed in the background.

  Ridiculous, she thought, shaking off the disturbing images.

  Andrew Lowell was an old man now and a sick one, if Stephen Lowell were to be believed, and deserving of every ill that befell him. She had waited twenty years for this opportunity, twenty long years to take her revenge upon the man who had changed her life.

  Oh, Mary Margaret had done well enough for herself. No one could deny that fact. Anger had fueled her ambitions and she had quickly mastered the intricacies of Parisian society, using her beauty and wit as entree into their world.

  But, the girl... dear God, the girl. Marisa had done what she felt was necessary, what she felt was right—even when she agreed to Stephen's grand scheme and sent her daughter off to America to make a future for herself she had managed to believe Alexandra would be the better for the opportunity.

  Stephen had approached her when she was at her lowest point, when the knowledge of her impending mortality lay over her like a shroud. She could not, would not, go to her grave without seeking her revenge upon the mighty Andrew Lowell and it Stephen's plans had dovetailed so nicely with her own desire for revenge that she had said yes before she gave her daughter's needs a second thought.